Church-wide Pilgrimage

What if, for a season of time, your whole church were to unite on a unique spiritual pilgrimage… a path by which every person came to see God with greater clarity and came to see each other's connection to God with new eyes… a journey on which the discovery of each person's unique spiritual style paved the way for an increase in the passionate spirituality expressed by your church… an ongoing adventure fueled by an increasing awareness of the Truth, Goodness, and Beauty of God's Kingdom… Would that be a worthwhile passage of time in the life of your church?

If you would like to proceed with this process, you'll want to refer to this page at various times along the way. So, bookmark this page in your web browser, using its bookmark icon or bookmark menu at the top of your screen.

Below you will find the steps necessary for taking your people on this 5-week church-wide pilgrimage. The full version includes spiritual style discovery, themed worship services, small group discussions and a pilgrims' feast. You can, however, organize a lighter version that just includes Spiritual Style discovery and themed worship services, or you can include the other components as time and energy permits. No matter which options you choose, even just helping your people to discover the ways in which they most directly connect with God will release a new power within your congregation.

The steps

To step through the Church-wide pilgrimage, you will (ideally) need an uninterrupted 5-week window of time punctuated by 5 weekly themed worship services. In order to plan this window, download the Church-wide Pilgrimage Date Calculator. It will help you determine the exact dates for each part of the pilgrimage in a timeline format you can PDF or print out to provide copies to your team.

Whether you have a small or large church, it is a good idea to pull together a small team of people to help with the different parts of the pilgrimage. Below are some of the people and teams you could include. Click the email link at the bottom of this page to share this page with the decision-makers and prospective team members for the pilgrimage.

Admin Team

Your Admin Team will take the lead with the organization and logistics needed to steer your church through the pilgrimage. Their main tasks will be to promote and sign up people for the pilgrimage (Step 3), facilitate the Spiritual Style Test (Step 4), make available The 3 Colors of Your Spiritality books, Reading Guides and Discussion Guides (optional Step 5), and producing Spiritual Style Group Profiles (Step 7). While one person could certainly take care of these tasks, if they have a helper or two, all the better. Be sure to share this page with and speak to your Admin Team so they can check off (with the help of the Admin ChecklistPDF or Word document version) all that needs to be done.

Worship Team

Your Worship Team will be responsible for preparing and facilitating the five themed worship services throughout the pilgrimage. These can be as simple or extravagant as you would like to make them. To get your team thinking about and planning those services, download the Worship Preparation Prompts and share it with them. It would also be helpful for the preacher(s) and leader(s) within your worship team to have a copy of The 3 Colors of Your Spirituality book for additional content ideas. They may also like to make use of some of the Artwork and pre-prepared PowerPoint slides related to the book.

To help your Worship Team plan for the pilgrimage, be sure to give them a PDF or paper copy of your pilgrimage timeline (see step 1 above).

Group Leaders (Optional)

If you choose the option of inviting people to study The 3 Colors of Your Spirituality book in groups together, you will need leaders to facilitate those groups. These could be your existing group leaders, or, given the limited timeframe of the pilgrimage, it may be a good opportunity to invite some people to lead a group who would otherwise be reluctant to do so. While experience in facilitating group discussion is always helpful, the Reading and Discussion Guides are put together in such a way as to make it easy for most people to be able to lead the process through.

To help your Group Leaders plan for the pilgrimage, be sure to give them a PDF or paper copy of your pilgrimage timeline (see step 1 above).

Once the leaders have been invited to take a group through the pilgrimage, your Admin Team will equip them in accordance with the instructions found in step 5 below.

Pilgrims' Feast team (Optional)

If your people like to meet together to share a meal, you may like to take up the option to host a Pilgrims' Feast. This will be a time of sharing and celebrating around the theme of Spiritual Styles. The layout of the tables, the decor, and the provided discussion starters are all designed to deepen the relationships and spirituality of your church in a relaxed atmosphere. The Pilgrims' Feast Guide provides suggestions about how to make this a special event in the life of your church. Consider passing it on to those with a gift for hospitality and see what ideas they may come up with.

Passion Compass?????

Scribe team (Optional)

As there will be a lot of discoveries taking place during the pilgrimage, you may also like to empower a Scribe Team to capture the stories and events of the pilgrimage. Through all kinds of media, their task will be to capture and tell the stories of your journey together as they happen. Download the Scribe Team Guide for ideas and to pass onto anyone who might be gifted and motivated to contribute in this way.

Having organized your team, you now need to invite people to the pilgrimage. This will involve two main parts: promotion and signing people up.

Promotion

You can download a promotional Poster for the pilgrimage or make your own advertising materials using the Artwork from the book. Be sure to make use of notice boards, paper and email newsletters, announcement times and social media to get the word out.

It can also be helpful if your pastor or another key person in your church can, as part of the promotion phase, share something of their personal experience or expectations around the spiritual style topic.

Signup sheet

To help you in organizing for those in your church to take the Spiritual Style Test (and to organize small groups along with copies of The 3 Colors of Your Spirituality book if you are going to include the small group part of the pilgrimage), you will need a means of signing people up. You can arrange your own signup process or make use of the Full Church-wide Pilgrimage Signup Sheet in PDF or Word document version (if including small group gatherings) or the Light Church-wide Pilgrimage Signup Sheet in PDF or Word document version.

If you are including reading and discussing The 3 Colors of Your Spirituality book in small groups as part of your pilgrimage, your Admin Team will need to arrange to acquire the needed materials. Refer to your signup sheet to determine the number of books to order (bulk discounts apply). Once you have received the books, distribute them to your small group leaders to hand out at their Week 0 small group meeting (see your Church-wide Pilgrimage Date Calculator from Step 1).

Also, email a copy of the Reading Guide and Discussion Guide to each of your group leaders. Ask them to either forward on the electronic copy or print a copy of the Reading Guide for each of their group members in time for their Week 0 small group meeting. If there are a larger number of members who will need a printed copy, you might like to help them with the printing. Also, encourage the group leaders to begin working through the Discussion Guide to prepare themselves for their small group meetings.

Once your congregation members have completed their Spiritual Style Test, their results will be shared back to the 3 Color World web site account from which they were invited. Even if some people are slower in getting around to doing the test, hopefully you will have received a lot of those results by the end of the first or second week of the pilgrimage. This will enable your Admin Team to produce a Spiritual Style Group Profileof your whole congregation, ready to be presented as part of your Week 3 worship service (see the Worship Preparation Prompts for details). To produce this profile, see the Advanced Profile option. Group profiles are free to produce.

If you are including small group meetings in your pilgrimage, your Admin Team will also need to produce a Spiritual Style Group Profilefor each small group. Follow the same Advanced Profile procedure as above. But, this time, select the members for a given small group and then repeat the process for each small group. If a person happens to be a part of more than one small group, include their results in each group they attend.

If anyone happens to have completed the Spiritual Style Test prior to or outside of the mass invitation to the church, and are happy to have their result included in the above profiles, ask them to visit their result page on the web site and share it with the person administrating the account you have sent the bulk mass invitations from.

As you approach the end of your Church-wide Pilgrimage, it is very important to begin thinking about how to harness the new-found energy and connection with God many people will be exploring. The whole journey has been moving your congregation to a new level of passionate spirituality—one of the essential principles of a healthy, fruitful, multiplying church. Not only that, but this time has aimed at equipping them to continue growing their spiritual passion into the future through a process of renewal and stretching.

To help you build upon the growth that has happened during the pilgrimage, with the help of the leaders and members of your pilgrimage team (and anyone who has shown a strong interest in the topic during the pilgrimage!), consider your answers to the following review questions. If you are personally limited for time, make sure you put this list of questions into someone's hands so that momentum is not lost! Make concrete plans for acting on any of the questions that seem to be especially relevant at this time:

How can we encourage our congregation to sign up to the free 28 Days of Discipline process to help them to keep growing beyond the pilgrimage? Should we feature it in our various newsletter and media forums for a season of time? Can we get some testimonies from leaders or others about that process or about the pilgrimage in general? Who will see to this promotion and story gathering? When will it happen?

How will we encourage the congregation to get involved in Mutual Mentoring to help them grow their spiritual passion? Who in the leadership of the church is prepared to model this kind of commitment to growth? How will they share with others about the process to encourage them? Should we ask people to let us know if they would like help in finding a Mutual Mentoring partner/s? How can we use our various newsletter and media forums to encourage people to get involved? Who will take the lead on making sure this kind of growth-focused activity is made a priority in church life? When will we review the engagement in Mutual Mentoring?

If it hasn't happened already, when will our leadership team work through our congregation's Spiritual Style Group Profile produced during the pilgrimage? Should we produce a group profile of our leadership team as well to compare it with the congregation's profile? Does our leadership team profile highlight any significant gaps in the spiritual perceptiveness of our team (i.e. missing spiritual styles or style families)? What do our leadership team and congregation profiles suggest about who would, and would not, feel welcome in our church? Are there people or style groups we need to encourage more intentionally so that their relationship with God is not inhibited and so that the overall passion in our church increases? Without necessarily having to move fully into our lowest style areas, how can we make sure that, as a church, we approach those who are strong in our lowest styles with warmth, acceptance and a teachable attitude?

Are there younger people in the church, who did not discover their spiritual styles during the pilgrimage, who would benefit from doing so as part of their growth towards God (the Spiritual Style Test can be taken by people as young as 13 — even younger with a little help in answering the questions)? In what forum/s could this best take place (e.g. families, youth group, youth small groups, etc.)? Who will look into this further and when will we hear about the possible plans?

Have we seen any leaders who have been really captured by the power of spiritual style discovery? Might one or more of those be interested in pursuing a spiritual style discovery ministry over the long-term, perhaps by helping the youth or newcomers to the church discover their styles, and also supporting small group leaders in the growth of their group members? Who will follow them up with a conversation and perhaps point them towards the group spiritual style discovery page and The 3 Colors of Your Spirituality book and tools page on this web site? When will we hear about their response?

(If you didn't study The 3 Colors of Your Spirituality book as part of your pilgrimage) Would the leadership team, evangelism team, worship team or small groups find it helpful to go deeper into the topic of spiritual styles by studying The 3 Colors of Your Spirituality book together with the help of the Reading and Discussion Guides? Will the church assist in making a bulk purchase so as to minimise the per copy cost of the book? Who will investigate this further to find out which groups would be interested and how to supply them with books and Reading and Discussion Guides? When will we hear about the response to the suggestion?

How can our worship team work towards validating, and maybe even incorporating into our worship services, more of the spiritual styles present within our church? How can we expand our church's understanding of the worship gathering as being what takes place from when people arrive in the carpark to when they leave to go home, and that the whole time between is an opportunity for everyone present to bless God and others in accordance with their own gifts and with respect given to other's spiritual styles? How can we, one-by-one, help people identify their unique worship contribution so that, when we meet together, there is so much more of God's presence to be experienced through the lives of each other? When will the worship team explore this aspect of their responsibility as worship leaders? How will we help the congregation to understand themselves as active worship contributors from carpark to carpark? Who will lead the way with this endeavour?

Should we take a (first or repeat) NCD Church Survey to evaluate the level of Passionate Spirituality in our church and to find out what are currently the principle areas we should be celebrating and the ones we should be working on to release the potential of our whole church? When will we do so? Who will do the investigations into it and when do we want to discuss what is involved?

Are there any people who who are showing a new-found passion and who, therefore, might benefit from exploring their spiritual gifts to enhance their serving of others? Could the Gift Test be of benefit to them? Who will follow them up with a conversation? When will we hear about their response?

How can we take the opportunity to get feedback from the small group leaders in our church about the Church-wide Pilgrimage and also how they are feeling about ongoing small group leadership? If they are interested in continuing with small group leadership, should we suggest to them the option of taking their group through the Communal Test to help their group members identify their unique contribution to growing healthy community, or perhaps the Gift Test to help them identify their spiritual gifts? On the basis of our congregation's Spiritual Style Group Profile, are there groups that could be formed around a particular style or combination of styles (e.g. a rational style discussion group, etc.) in order to fan into flame the passion of those people?

Now, act on your convictions about the next stage of church life and enjoy the growing true, good, and beautiful partnership between God and your people!